I alone am the honoured

satisfaction feels like a distant memory

•••

My eyes crack open to the ruins of the bathroom. Streaks of red interrupted the flawless tiles that were the white walls, smothered on by my own hand. The floor looks no different.

Upon every hour of my troubled sleep, I would awake to Asmodeus' claws gripping into my perseverance, taunting me with his suffocating presence. He would just about do anything to weaken me mentally and dip his greedy hands into the sweet honey that is the control centre of my mind.

This internal war is not unfamiliar to us for they are the cause of every sin I have found myself committing under his rein.

Burning wood corroded the room all night, wafting from the gap between the door and the floor. King Akraton's thick aroma did not help in lessening the struggle to pacify the creature within.

My clothes are drenched in blood, splotches of red covering every inch of my body. A dull pain encapsulates my hands and face and everything in between. The glass shards were removed but the continuous struggle only replaced the mini wounds with bruises and claw-like marks across my skin. Asmodeus obliged in healing the fresh wounds but refused to cure the pain alongside it.

Among the mess, I fetch a towel and scrounge for shower products. Scorching water hits my body and soothes the ache festering in my neck and shoulders from sleeping in weird positions. I let it drown out the memories and the thoughts attempting to override my temporary peace.

My future is unclear. It is an ever-changing mass of grey clay, transforming and adapting to its own will, never allowing me to understand and decipher the shape it is becoming.

After smothering my body with the essentials, water beads roll down my stature, scarred hands roaming every sullied crevice.

Wrapping the towel around my body, I exit the shower and realise that I don't have any clothes to change into. I etch towards the door, pinching my nose, and lower myself to the floor to listen to a set of slow, heavy breaths against the door.

Figuring he is asleep, I open the door cautiously, only to find two golden rings staring at me. I pause at the sight, the King's face a hairs breadth away. His eyes shine like melted butter beneath the soft-white fluorescence, brimming with a warmth rivalling the sun. Those endless pools of gold rake down my dripping, towel-covered body, roaming the scars and tattoos on display for his eyes alone.

I, too, cannot stop myself gliding from his divinity-given eyes, to his broad shoulders and his biceps, exposed to the elements in a skimpy, black tank top. A true Golden Blooded. No common man ever, not even a pathological liar, would call the Royal species grotesque since such men can at least recognise the authentic beauty that is their biology and fate.

First, he is an honoured deity with a mop of messy, black hair and cherry-red horns and sun beams for eyes. Second, he is a Royal that adorns a jet-black tank top and navy, dress pants, a symbol of his undying loyalty to his Kingdom and its signature colours.

Blinking out of his stupor, he rolls his shoulders back and stands up with me following right after. Disgust coils in my gut at my raging thoughts, uncontrollable and sultry. The thoughts that consumed me at the sight of his half-lidded eyes possessed me so quickly and forcefully that I wonder its origin. He is attractive, in the sense of how all Golden Blooded specimens are, but even this Gods' creation induces a vomit-provoking smell that sends Asmodeus attempting to kill him at every waking moment of my foreseeable existence. I do not find him attractive in that sense, so what is this unwanted desire and where does it come from?